Systems of Cities

Harnessing urbanization for growth and poverty alleviation

THE WORLD BANK URBAN AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT STRATEGY

Systems of Cities
Integrating National and Local Policies
Connecting Institutions and Infrastructure

Making pro-poor
policies a city
priority

Supporting city
economies

Focusing on the core

elements of the city system

Promoting
a safe and
sustainable
urban environment

Encouraging
progressive
land and
housing markets

The square in the circle is an iconic symbol of the ideal city, spanning cultures across
the globe, from the Middle East to Asia, from Latin America to Africa and Europe. The
square is a metaphor for the house, and the circle is the universe encompassing it.

Foreword
From the earliest times, cities have been centers of democracy, creativity, and economic
activity. Why? Economics and geography inform us that density and agglomeration are
essential for productivity and growth. Cities
also serve as catalysts for collective action,
decision-making, and accountability.
The World Bank is putting forth its new Urban
and Local Government Strategy at a critical
time. For the rst time in history more than
half the worlds people live in cities. Over 90
percent of urban growth is occurring in the
developing world, adding an estimated 70 million new residents to urban areas each year.
During the next two decades, the urban population of the worlds two poorest regions
South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africais expected to double.
It is estimated that today one billion people
live in urban slums in developing countries.
Improvement in urban conditions, as demonstrated by many successful programs around
the world, shows that slums can become vibrant and well integrated parts of a city, as in
Senegal, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The demands of poverty alleviation, climate
change and sustainable growth will put todays developing cities to the test. An estimated 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions
come from cities and more than 70 percent
of energy is consumed in urban areas. This
places cities at the forefront of the climate
change agenda where denser, more compact cities will be the essential urban form in
the years ahead.
The new strategy also inaugurates the
Decade of the City, a decade that will be remembered for recognizing cities at the core
of growth and human development. Never
before has there been so much interest in cities: city associations, citywide programs, cityuniversity and private sector partnerships. In
developing countries, cities often provide the
rst opportunity for elected ofcials to meet

their constituents, governments to collect

taxes, taxpayers to demand efcient services, investors to start new businesses. This
is where collective voices are heard and accountability matters.
Successful cities change their ways, improve
their nances, attract private investors, and
take care of the poor. The new Urban and
Local Government Strategy will help governments at all levels make cities more equitable,
efcient, sustainable, and environmentally
friendly. The strategy draws on two principles.
First, that density, agglomeration, and proximity are fundamental to human advancement,
economic productivity, and social equity.
Second, that cities need to be well managed
and sustainable.
The strategy unfolds along ve business
lines: (1) city management, governance, and
nance, (2) urban poverty, (3) cities and economic growth, (4) city planning, land, and
housing, and (5) urban environment and climate change. These set out the objectives
and benchmarks for the Bank to monitor its
nancing and policy advice. Most of our clients still face an immense lack of resources, and it will take some time until all the
poor will be fully integrated in the city tissue. For this reason, the new strategy calls
for a broader-based, scaled-up approach to
urban poverty, focusing more than ever on
policies and actions that can create livable
cities.
The World Banks new Urban & Local Government Strategy aims to be a key element
in helping civic leaders and national authorities think through, and implement, policies
and programs for the benet of their people, their cities, and their countries. I hope
you will take a moment to look through this
strategy and learn how we hope to make a
difference.
Katherine Sierra
Vice-President, Sustainable Development
1

Contents
Foreword

The new Urban Strategy

A system of citiesdriving growth, reducing poverty

Focusing on the core elements of the city system
Making pro-poor policies a city priority
Supporting city economies

4
6

10

12

Encouraging progressive urban land and housing markets

Promoting a safe and sustainable urban environment
Cross-cutting approaches to reinforce the strategy

16
20

24

Copyright 2009 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank

Photos were collected from World Bank staff, the World Banks Photo Library, the Institute for Research and Urban
Planning of Curitiba, and Stock.xchng photographers Jurgen de Clercq, David Garzn Rodrguez, Ccile Geng, and
Jos A. Warletta.

The new Urban Strategy

Urbanization is a dening phenomenon of
this century, and the developing world is
the locus of this demographic transformation. Nearly two billion new urban residents
are expected in the next 20 years, and the
urban populations of South Asia and Africa
are likely to double. Much of the growth will
be in small and medium-sized cities; even
today more than half the worlds urban
population resides in cities smaller than
500,000. This raises questions about managing urbanization and delivering World
Bank assistance for urban development in
the coming decade.
With cities accounting for some 70 percent of
global GDP, recent economic thinking is reshaping the Banks approach to urbanization.
A new paradigm, supported by a growing literature, underscores the benets of urbanization, driven by rising productivity, uid labor
markets, and greater market access. For many
today, the question is not how to contain urbanizationit is how to prepare for it, reaping
the benets of economic growth associated
with urbanization while reducing congestion,
crime, informality, and slums. Urbanization, if
properly managed, can also address the climate change agenda through the design of
denser, more compact cities that increase
energy efciency and reduce travel time and
costs for urban residents and businesses.

their urban planning regulations to enable

density and to prevent demand pressures for scarce housing and land to bid
up prices excessively.
t

The costs of not dealing now with the

coming urban growth will be excessive
and difcult to reverse.

t

Actively fostering agglomerations benets and managing congestion will have

big payoffs for economic growth and
poverty reduction.

t

To reach the increasing number of secondary cities, where much urban growth
is happening today, the Bank will expand
on its wholesaling approaches by working through nancial intermediaries and
by developing national and state programs that retail nancial services and
technical support to local governments.

The new Urban Strategy realigns the Banks

urban business with ve business lines considered critical for cities and local governments in the decade ahead:
t

Focusing on the core elements of the city

system: City management, nance, and
governance

t

Making pro-poor policies a city priority:

Reducing urban poverty and upgrading
slums

t

Supporting city economies: Cities and

economic growth

t

Encouraging progressive urban land and

housing markets: Urban land, housing,
and planning

t

Promoting a safe and sustainable urban

environment: Urban environment, climate
change, and disaster management.

The main messages informing the World

Banks new Urban and Local Government
Strategy:
t

t

Urbanization is too important to be left

to cities aloneit requires national attention to critical policy areas, such as land
and housing markets, that fall beyond the
purview of a single city administration.
Cities will need to be equipped to handle
new residentsthis will require being
more proactive, for instance, in updating

A system of citiesdriving
growth, reducing poverty
Urbanization in the developing world was
once considered too fast and unmanageable, something to be resisted and controlled. Efforts by many national, state, and local
governments have been devoted to curbing
it. Indeed, this thinking represents the old
paradigm. Many policymakers now recognize that urbanization is not only inevitableit
is also a powerful force for economic growth
and poverty reduction. This new paradigm
is grounded in the notion that densityand
the urbanization that drives itis essential to
achieving agglomeration economies and productivity gains. Function, not size, is the metric for measuring a citys performance. So,
how can urbanization be managed to harness
its potential for economic development?

Box 1.

Systems of city clusters

Chinas current 11th Five-Year Plan (20062010)

is encouraging city clusters to become the main
form of urbanization. These clusters are designed to improve connectivity between large,
medium, and small cities, each forming a city
system.
Chinas encouragement of these city systems is
motivated by the development paths of its two
economic powerhouses: the Pearl River Delta
and the Yangtze River Delta. The Pearl River
Delta, encompassing Guangzhou, Shenzhen,
Dongguan, Foshan, and other cities, is home
to 2.2 percent of Chinas population, but accounts for 10.3 percent of GDP. The Yangtze
River Delta, encompassing Shanghai, Suzhou,
Hangzhou, Nanjing and other cities, has only
6.7 percent of Chinas population and accounts
for 15.7 percent of Chinas GDP. Why are these
places successful?
Much of their success builds on exploiting
economies of scale, along with agglomeration
economies from intraindustry and interindustry
interactions. In the words of the CEO of one of
the Pearl River Deltas largest electronics manufacturers, The materials and components
that we use in our 49 production lines today
4

World Development Report 2009: Reshaping

Economic Geography identies higher densities, shorter distances, and lower divisions as
the building blocks for economic success. It
also points out that no country has grown to
middle-income status without industrializing
and urbanizing. Building on these messages, the Banks new urban strategy is based
on facilitating spatial efciency in production
while addressing congestion and internal divisions within urban areas (box 1). The focus
is on harnessing the potential of urbanization
to deliver equitable and inclusive growth and
poverty alleviation.
Policy discussions should start with the institutions and instruments that can promote

arrive daily from suppliers in the zone by a route

that generally takes not more than one hour. In
practice, we are a single vast factory scattered
across the territory. The existence in a relatively
small area of everything we need to make the
whole range of audio products is the regions
strong point. In other places the cost of labor
may actually be lower, but around their factory
there is nothing else.
Improving the uidity of markets for land, labour
and products hold the key for successful urbanizationit allows the same parcel of land to
accommodate higher value production, helps
connect poor people with economic opportunities, and lowers transport costs to facilitate
economies of scale and specialization. In fact,
integrating the institutions that govern the transfer and use of agrarian and urban land is likely
to yield high payoffs in economic prosperity and
harmonious development.
Consider Hunan Province, where the cities of
Changsha, Zhuzhou, and Xiangtan are cooperating to build expressways and railways, improving connectivity among three cities and
with their hinterland. A regional cooperation
plan species that market prices will allocate
land for different uses and promote land intensication in central city areas.

economic density and manage social and environmental costs.

As countries develop and economies grow,
some places take off, with rising economic
densities that attract people to live in or near
towns and cities. The urban share of the population rises sharplyfrom about 10 percent
to 50 percentas countries grow from low
incomes to lower middle incomes of about
$3,500.
Between 2000 and 2005, the average urban
population growth for low-income countries
was 3 percent a year, more than twice the
rate for middle-income countries and more
than three times that for high-income countries. This spatial transformation is closely related to the sectoral transformation of countries from agrarian to industrial and then to
postindustrial economies, helped by a healthy
farm sector.
When agriculture is doing well, people who
move are pulled by prospects of a better life
in citiesnot pushed from rural areas. Not
only does this make them better off, it also
improves the conditions in villages they leave
and increases the productivity of cities where
they settle.

Box 2.

New diagnostic
frameworks to
support national
urban strategies

Planning urbanization will require national

urban strategies supported by new diagnostic frameworks. The Bank will assist countries in responding to urbanization pressures
by piloting a new diagnostic framework and
analytical tool. The Urbanization Review will
be a client-driven instrument to examine
demographic trends nationally and within
critical urban agglomerations. It will look at
impacts on land and housing availability and
affordability. It will also look at mobility and
access to jobs and critical infrastructure services. It will monitor the urban-rural spatial
transformations. The Urbanization Review
will inform country assistance strategy formulation with appropriate policy and institutional responses in countries where rapid
urbanization requires a strategic plan.

What are the policy priorities for successful

urbanization?

administering land rights should be spatially

neutralnot distinguishing whether a place
is rural or urban. In places with low urban
shares, assigning property rights will provide
incentives to farmers for specializing in higher value crop production or making the land
available for urban uses.

Urbanization policies should focus on increasing the efciency of the transformation from
a rural to an urban economy, in the process
balancing agglomeration benets and congestion costs from concentration. The most
important market failures to be addressed are
those associated with land markets. Increasing the spatial efciency of production is inherently linked to how the use of the same piece
of land changes to accommodate economic
density. For places with incipient urbanization,
it becomes important that land is registered
and property rights are allocated and protected. The national institutions responsible for

Urbanization is not a challenge exclusively for

cities, so addressing the new urban agenda
will require much closer collaboration across
all tiers of government. To be effective, developing countries will need efcient, multitiered
policy coordination mechanisms to support
policy formulation and coordinated interventions between national and local governments. Metropolitan and regional agencies
may be necessary where there is a mismatch
between municipal boundaries and the urban
economic footprint in order to deliver services more effectively and to promote economic
growth.
5

Focusing on the core

elements of the city system
This business line assists cities and local
governments in planning and financing
service delivery, strengthening urban governance, and making city management
more effective. Over the past decade, decentralization has devolved more authority
to local governments, without the corresponding and necessary scal decentralization. This business line aims to support
updating legal and regulatory frameworks,
building sound accountability mechanisms
for local governments and utilities, and
promoting a mix of nancing strategies by
segmenting local governments into those
that can access market-based nance and
those that will need technical assistance
and performance incentives to access the
market. These measures will be underpinned with improved local revenue mobilization, data collection, and monitoring at
the city level.
Understanding urban development through a
city system approach departs from previous
strategies. Like all systems, a city depends
on the smooth functioning of its constituent
elements. Under the new Urban Strategy,
the focus is on the core elements of the city
systemmanagement, nance, and governance. These three core elements need to
function well for a city to deliver on its mandate, including the delivery of vital services to
the urban poor.
Good management and information systems,
coupled with good leadership, can be ineffective if not supported by adequate nancing. Similarly, a city without a commitment
to good governance and accountability will
have difculty mobilizing tax revenue from its
citizens and nancing from the market. These
core elements of the city system remain the
most basic and important focus in the decade ahead.

City management, nance, and governance

are at the core of the Banks urban business
lines. It comprises the largest number of projects and the highest lending volume. All other
business lines in one way or another depend

on these core elements of the city system to

function effectively (box 3).

City management
If urbanization is to be harnessed for its potential to deliver growth and improved livelihoods for urban residents, cities and local
governments need to be positioned to exploit
that potential. Yet a recurring theme across
most of the developing world is the ambiguity
and confusion over the roles and mandates
of national, state, and local government actors in delivering services at the local level.
Great strides have been made in recent
years in devolving authority to the local governments, as countries have increasingly
pursued decentralization. For many, however, this process has been characterized by
mixed signals, inconsistent legal and regulatory frameworks, and wide discrepancies between assigned and actual responsibility for
delivering services. This is often the result of a
mismatch between expenditure and revenue
assignments, conicting mandates between
national, state and local actors, and uneven
capacity across local governments.
Professional development. Capacity building to improve local government management is essential. But it needs to go beyond
the provision of training to include reforms that
change the rules of the game, using incentives and rule-based policy frameworks. Providing resources to the local government tier
on a performance basis can instill a sense of
competition for resources and act as an incentive to reform. These reform measures
could range from nancial management, accountability, local revenue collection, economic performance, and a host of other areas.
Other methods that have proven successful are professional certication programs
for municipal staff that elevate, professionalize, and promote their development. The
key is to design a system that recognizes
heterogeneity across the local government

Box 3. Giving Ugandan local

governments power over
purse strings
In the mid-1990s, Ugandas overburdened central government implemented reforms to decentralize service deliveryto give local authorities
more power to deliver basic services. Local
control is preferable. Compared with regional
ministers, local staff can better target needs and
make sure funds are delivered more efciently.
But for this to work, local governments needed an
overhaul: training, better accountability, more participatory decisionmaking, and robust oversight.
To this end, the World Bank provided nancial
support to streamline the transfer of development funds from the central to local governments, boosting local capacity. The rst project,
the Local Government Development Program,
helped develop software for monitoring funding allocations and was supported by $80.9m
in World Bank funding and $9m from the Ugandan national government and participating local
governments.

sector and provides an equitable basis for

local governments of all sizes and capacities
to participate. Block grants linked to performance criteria are one way of providing such
assistance.
Benchmarking performance. Helping cities strengthen data collection and management systems will be a key focus of urban
development support in the decade ahead.
The new Global City Indicators Program,
established by the Bank with other development partners, is envisaged as a facility that
will help in that regard. The program, driven
by cities, aims to provide a standard set of
indicators that will enable cities to compare
and benchmark their performance against
their peers. Using a web-based platform, the
program provides a framework for cities to
learn through peer networks of other cities, in
their preferred mode. It is now rolling out to all

A second complementary program supported

similar efforts with additional attention to building local government capacity. The World Bank
provided a $75m grant and $50m in additional
credit toward this effort. Other governments
joined: Danish International Assistance provided $2.4m, Austria $0.3m, and the Netherlands
$7.5m.
Local authorities thrived with the injection of
nancing and expertise, letting them better
monitor budget performance and resource
allocation. By 2007, revenue bases in some
cases increased by 20% or more. And all major
local governments had three-year development
plans and were submitting accounts to the
Ugandan auditing ofce on time.
With a renewed focus on strengthening the
policy and institutional capacity of local government, the central government has institutionalized new training schemes. And thanks to World
Bank advice and technical assistance, Uganda
now has a bevy of accredited public and private
training service providers that competitively bid
for government contracts.

regions, working through the Banks regional

urban hubs in Marseille and Singapore and
with other regional partners.
Community engagement. Building on successful local government and communitybased organization partnerships, the Bank
will share good practices and promote programs that improve community engagement
in addressing urban poverty, crime, and violence. For instance, practical measures supported through investment projects could include improving street lighting and renovating
dilapidated public buildings or facilities to assist in bringing down crime and violence.
Technology. The Bank will also assist clients
in accessing the benets of information and
communication technology advances and
support judicious efforts to promote the use
of new technologies by cities where there is

demand. Advisory support in this domain can

help cities improve service delivery, enhance
productivity, reduce costs, and increase local
revenues. The Bank will support this effort
by preparing an Urban ICT Toolkit that will
outline key program and policy areas for ICT
integration to support cities and bring good
practices from around the world.

to strengthen service delivery. This support will

be provided in preinvestment planning within
the city development strategy framework and
help to develop bankable investment projects
with associated budgeting for recurrent operating and maintenance costs.

Urban governance
Infrastructure service delivery
Urban transport infrastructure and services
are the backbone of an efcient city system.
Rapidly growing urban populations and rising
numbers of private vehicles are overwhelming
many cities, resulting in increased congestion,
less mobility, more accidents, and poor air
quality. Responses to these intraurban challenges include an emphasis on coordinating
land use planning and transportation and promoting affordable public transport, with incentives for proper maintenance. Urban-rural and
interregional linkages are also important in
enabling a city system to function beyond the
city core through connective infrastructure.
Another critical issue is the inadequate provision of basic infrastructurewater and sanitation, waste disposal, and powerto urban
residents. More than 50 percent of the urban
population in South Asia and 40 percent in
Sub-Saharan Africa lacks access to sanitation services.
These deciencies have real economic consequences. In Latin American cities, poor or
inadequate infrastructure is estimated to have
reduced urban economic output by 10 to 15
percent. The impact seems to be even higher
on small rms and home-based enterprises,
which cannot afford more reliable private
sources, such as power generators and wells
for water.

In countries with severe infrastructure service

gaps and backlogs, the Bank will assist by
supporting inventories of these backlogs, along
with support to local governments in conducting economic analysis and investment planning

The governance agenda is expanding in urban

operations, and over the last six years there
has been a 60 percent increase in the lending and capacity building assistance for urban
governance. But much of this support has
been focused on supply-side dimensions, including improvements in systems and internal
capacity, with less emphasis on demand-side
governance, including participation in budgeting and investment planning and increasing
the voice of citizens on service delivery.
Participatory budgeting approaches in project design can often slow implementation of
investments. Going forward, such participatory approaches, vital to ensuring effectiveness and impact, should be introduced in the
preinvestment phase of the project cycle and
benet from city development strategies and
other participatory upstream instruments.
The new Strategy emphasizes expanding
demand-side governance approaches. These
interventions will include provision of policy
guidance and sharing good practices in the
implementation of service delivery surveys and
citizen report cards. Of critical importance will
be mainstreaming these practices in the ways
cities and local governments routinely conduct
their business, emphasizing a client-driven,
end-user orientation in service provision.

Municipal nance
National governments typically have devolved
service delivery and expenditure responsibilities
to the local level but have retained control over
signicant revenue sources. Central governments have tended to maintain decisionmaking

power over taxes that can be levied locally,

the tax rates, and user service fees that local
authorities can charge for basic service delivery. But local governments seldom tap the
full range of local revenue sources available to
them, collecting only a fraction of the revenues
legally due under the taxing arrangements in
place. As a result, most local governments
have a narrow scal base, with sharply limited
discretion over own-source revenues. Even
when local authorities have the legal authority
to mobilize own-source revenues, they have
been reluctant to fully exercise it.
Untied revenue-sharing. Clearly dened,
untied revenue-sharing between central and
local governments can yield local government
receipts that are transparent legal entitlements. This will allow local governments to
allocate the revenues received to expenditure
priorities at their discretion. They would share
the revenues of buoyant tax sources, like the
VAT or income tax, that require uniform national administration, while retaining decisionmaking power over the uses of funds.
The Bank has assisted governments in rationalizing intergovernmental transfer arrangements. Bank advisory support will continue
to focus on greater use of untied revenuesharing and of performance grants or municipal contracts that reward local governments
for specically dened improvements in local
service delivery and management.
Subnational nance. In the next few years,
public institutions are likely to ll much of the
subnational credit gap, just as international
institutions ll part of the national credit gap.
This will create an opportunity for innovative design in using public institutions to help
channel private savings to the subnational
market, without displacing private institutions
already active in the market.
More effort is needed to structure and segment the municipal market into ones that

can access commercial credit and those that

may need subsidies. In this area, Bank urban
teams will work with IFC colleagues in the
Subnational Finance Program to develop instruments that enable market segmentation,
removing subsidies to local governments that
can access nance, while providing technical
assistance and support to those that have
not yet reached this stage.
Performance grants and municipal contracts. Where local governments have not yet
reached credit-worthy status, performance
grants and municipal contracts can provide
incentives for reform and capacity strengthening. Performance benchmarks may include
such items as timely preparation of budgets
and nancial reports, greater citizen participation in setting budget priorities, better maintenance of infrastructure assets, and measurable improvement in local service quality or
coverage. Local governments that perform
well or meet the contractual standard are rewarded with additional grant funds. Poor performers in principle should be penalized by a
reduction in transfers.
Blending nancial instruments. A exible blend of nancing instruments will address a wide array of different circumstances. Wholesaling will be applied to expand
reach and coverage to the growing populations in secondary cities. Intergovernmental transfers can serve as an on-granting
mechanism to local governments that are
not creditworthy within a specied reform
program. Funds channeled through nancial intermediaries will be based on market
principles. Market-based nancing to local
governments can be extended through the
Subnational Finance Program, accompanied by efforts to develop the market for
nancial services, removing legal and regulatory obstacles, developing local currency
instruments and risk-sharing and guarantee
instruments to facilitate local and international nancial collaboration.

Making pro-poor
policies a city priority
Narrowly focused neighborhood slum upgrading interventions, while generally effective, have fallen well short of addressing
the magnitude and scope of expanding informality and slums. In addition to pursuing
sound macroeconomic policies aimed at
enhancing growth, cities need to be better
equipped to address urban poverty. This
business line aims to support cities and
national governments in addressing urban
poverty by expanding policy-based interventions and scaling up investments in services for the poor citywide and nationwide. It
will be underpinned by urban poverty analysis to guide policy decisions. Partnerships
will be encouraged with nongovernment
organizations, community-based organizations, and the private sector.
Many of todays urban poor in developing
countries live in remote locations due to the
high cost of housing in the city core. Living in
peripheral urban locations, particularly without adequate access to transport services,
can mean exclusion from a range of urban
facilities, services, and jobs. In many areas,
neighborhood stigma, which can reduce
peoples access to jobs and increase other
types of discrimination, is also a major constraint for the poor.
Several countries with national approaches
to slums have reduced or stabilized slum
growth in the last 15 years. In Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, and
Tunisia, political commitment at the central
government level has led to large-scale slum
upgrading and service provision for the poor
through legal and regulatory reform on land
policy, regularization programs, and inclusive
policies.

10

Among programs aimed at the urban poor,

slum upgrading is probably the most common. Slum upgrading programs have a long
history, becoming quite popular in the 1970s
with a shift away in the mid-1980s. This shift
has been attributed to donors focus on housing nance, adjustment loans, and public service privatization.

Local initiatives have also been effective when

linked to social programs and carried out in
partnership with local community organizations. For example, programs in Jamaica and
Brazil combine micronance, land tenure,
crime and violence prevention, investments in
social infrastructure for day care, youth training, and health care with local community action and physical upgrading of slums.
There is also an emerging role for the private
sector in slum upgrading as businesses realize the potential purchasing power at the
base of the economic pyramid. An enabling
environment for small private service providers can help to facilitate private sector investments in slums. Micronance has been
demonstrated to be a powerful instrument
for poverty reduction that enables the poor to
build assets, increase incomes, and reduce
their vulnerability to economic stress. Policybased lending aimed at better targeting of
subsidies to the poor while enhancing access to mortgage nance for middle-income
groups have had positive impacts for the
urban poorand for housing outcomes more
generallyin Brazil, India, and Mexico.
Broad-based policies. Urban poverty reduction strategies will take a two-pronged
approach. First, they should include proactive
policies that promote macroeconomic stability and growth, well dened property rights,
a good investment climate, an attractive incentive framework, functioning land and labor
markets, and investments in education and
infrastructure. In many countries, urbanization has helped to foster this growth and thus
can reduce urban poverty over the long term,
providing new income opportunities for rural
migrants, and through the second-round impact on those who stay in rural areas.
Scaling up services. The second approach,
equally vital, involves working with countries
to scale up slum upgrading and services for
the poor to a national scale. Programs improving living conditions in slums through
extending affordable services to slum dwellers and investing in upgrading can have

Box 4. Millennium
Development Goal for
slum improvement
Millennium Development Goal 7 sets the objective for urban poverty alleviation by calling
for the improvement of the lives of at least
100 million slum dwellers. Estimates suggest that around one-third of the urban population in developing countriesnearly one
billion peopleare living in slums. Slums are
generally characterized as informal settlements with poor quality housing, limited
access to services, high densities, and insecure land tenure. Insecure tenure puts
the urban poor at constant risk of eviction,
prevents them from building assets and accessing credit, inhibits using ones home for
income-generating activities, and does not
allow for investments in service provision.
Countries farthest from reaching the MDG
target on slums are mainly in Sub-Saharan
Africa, where urbanization is rapid and local
governments lack the capacity to accommodate new residents.

enormous benets in health outcomes, help

cities to adapt to the risks of climate change,
reduce environmental and social costs, and
generate new employment opportunities. Innovative approaches now provide important
opportunities to improve service provision,
such as delivering output-based aid, offering pro-poor incentives to utilities and the
private sector, and creating an enabling environment for small private service providers
while ensuring quality and affordability for
consumers.
Going forward, the Bank is partnering with
the Cities Alliance in exploring ways of scaling up to national approaches. In this context,
the Bank aims to develop more policy-based
approaches that will tackle the difcult issues
related to land and service delivery in informal
settlements. This will pave the way for a more
comprehensive approach to upgrading at the
national level.

Filling knowledge gaps. Increasing support

for analytical and diagnostic work on urban
poverty will help ll knowledge gaps and provide the basis for better designed programs
and policies. While the past decade has generated substantial new information on the
characteristics of urban poverty, there are still
major knowledge gaps. Cities often lack the
tools to diagnose urban poverty and assess
the extent to which their policies are propoor. Many cities lack even the most basic
information on who the poor are, how many
there are, and where they are located.
Putting the poor on the map. Building an
information base at the city, country, regional, and global levels, as well as the capacity to use the information, is a top priority.
New tools such as geographic information
systems and poverty mapping are important
instruments for urban poverty analysis. New
analytical tools, such as the Vulnerability
Assessment, are being developed to support
cities in their efforts to collect and analyze
data. The Assessment is designed to survey
and analyze the vulnerability of populations in
urban areas based on their multiple deprivations, as well as the risks to climate change
impacts due to their precarious location in
informal settlements. It will include a mapping of slums and vulnerable populations as
a basis for targeting assistance to the urban
poor.
Safety nets. Specifically designed social
programs and safety nets for the urban poor
need strengthening. Conditional cash transfers are particularly relevant in times of nancial crisis when poor families may deem it
necessary to withdraw children from school
to seek employment. Workfare programs or
labor intensive public works projects can also
be very effective in urban areas to provide
income support and short-term work opportunities, offer on-the-job training for unskilled
workers, and construct or rehabilitate needed
public infrastructure. To maximize the impacts
on the urban poor, works can be carried out
in low-income settlements, hiring local residents for slum upgrading activities.

11

Supporting city economies

With cities as the engines of economic
growth, this business line outlines a range
of strategies cities can pursue to drive
growth. They include improving the subnational investment climate, increasing
competitiveness, and partnering with the
private sector. Cities can also develop cultural heritage assets linked to sustainable
tourism development and, in postindustrial
cities, use browneld redevelopment and
urban revitalization to transform idle land
and property into productive re-uses. New
tools are also being tested to help cities develop market intelligence to attract new retail investment, nancial services, and real
estate developers to underserved inner-city
areas.
One of the main insights from economic
thinking on geography and economic development is that rms in many industrial and
business service industries value agglomeration. They prefer to concentrate close to other
rms in the same or related product lines,
and in locations with good access to domestic and international markets. This economic
concentration accelerates when countries liberalize and open to trade.

12

What are the priorities for urbanization policies in cities and towns in intermediate and
advanced stages of urbanization?
In addition to facilitating density is ensuring
that urban settlements are well connected to
each other to gain from complementarities
in their production structures. Market towns
facilitate internal scale economies for rms,
while also serving as conduits for marketing
and distributing agricultural produce. Medium-size cities provide localization economies
for manufacturing industriesbenets that
come from the co-location of manufacturers
within one or two industries that can benet
from supply chain linkages. And the largest
cities provide urbanization economies, characterized by diverse facilities that foster innovation in business, government, and education services.
As demand for land bids up prices in metropolises, investors make decisions on relocating
businessesweighing the costs of wages,
rents, and congestion with the benets of agglomeration. It is common for manufacturing
activities to deconcentrate from city centers
to their surrounding suburbsbut not for
services.

In India, liberalization in the early 1990s led to

greater concentration of industry in port cities and metropolitan areas. Recent evidence
suggests that just 20 citieswith good market accessaccounted for some 60 percent
of private manufacturing investment in India
between 2000 and 2005. Similarly in China,
foreign rms entering after the open door
policy in 1978 have preferred to locate in cities with a large industrial base and a history
of foreign investment.

The stock and quality of electricity networks,

road and other transportation systems, and
telecommunication systems matter most for
national growth. In India, the quality of transport
interconnectedness between cities is closely
related to urban growth and urban productivity. Further evidence shows that improving
urban airport accessibility and size in countries
such as Uzbekistan and Honduras can reduce
total air transport costs by 10 percent.

The benets of agglomeration have been well

documented in China, Japan, Korea, and
Malaysia. China is perhaps most revealing,
with 50 percent of GDP generated in coastal
urban agglomerations accounting for only 20
percent of the territory. Many of the Banks
clients have cities that would like to emulate
Chinas experience, and local economic development approaches are in high demand.

Similarly, improving urban seaport efciency,

port infrastructure, and handling can reduce
shipping costs by more than 12 percent. In
international trade, this is equivalent to reducing the distance between origin and destination by 500 miles. These ndings stand up
in other sectors of economic infrastructure
and in other regions. In Sub-Saharan Africa,
power failures in Tanzania account for the

equivalent of a 10 percent sales loss for the

median manufacturing rm.
The operating scale of urban and metropolitan economies often does not coincide with
their physical and administrative boundaries. In many countries, no institutional entity
covers the economic footprint of the urban
or metropolitan economy. So, decisions on
infrastructure investments and its nancing
are made through complex (and inefcient)
negotiations between central government,
often multiple municipalities, regional or state
authorities, and the private sector. A critical
part of the new urban strategy involves lling
this void, with support for both infrastructure
decision-making and its nancing.
Fostering cities as gateways. At the national
and regional level, policies will need to enable
cities to function as gateways to international
markets and as facilitating agents for domestic production and consumption markets. This
cannot be achieved by cities alone. National
policy coordination is essential to ensure that
cities have good connectivity to port and other
transport infrastructure and to ensure appropriate linkages and connectivity between cities and their hinterland to serve as markets for
agricultural goods and production centers for
agro-processing and marketing. The World
Bank can assist by supporting regional planning and integration analysis and strategy formulation, as well as related inter-agency coordination efforts that facilitate such linkages.
Improving the subnational investment climate. Often the rst place to start for attracting investment to cities is improving the subnational investment climate, with a focus on
reducing red tape. Over the past several years,
the World Bank has expanded the scope and
coverage of subnational Investment Climate
Assessments and Doing Business Surveys,
providing critical information about a citys
ability to attract investment from a private sector perspective. Because the methodology
and indicators are standardized, cities can
compare their performance with their peers
and establish benchmarks for improvement.

Such data have been used to dene appropriate entry points for technical assistance and
investments in improving a citys economic
prospects. Going forward, the Bank will ensure
appropriate linkages of subnational Investment
Climate Assessment and Doing Business data
with the design of the next generation of local
economic development projects.
Supporting urban regeneration. For postindustrial cities in transition, the Bank can
assist by supporting urban regeneration and
browneld redevelopment approaches (see
boxes 5, 6, and 7). While the Banks engagement in these areas has been somewhat limited, growing demand, particularly in Eastern

Box 5.

Cultural heritage
assets promote
local economic
development

More than a decade of experience in cultural

heritage interventions linked to sustainable
tourism development position the Bank to
provide critical assistance in this area. Since
the 1970s, the Bank has provided nancial
resources for 241 projects having a direct
investment component in heritage conservation and reuse with a total investment value of
$4bn. There are currently 117 projects under
implementation, with a direct investment value
of $1.8bn in cultural heritage components.
In 2000, the Bank established a dedicated
Trust Fund for Cultural Heritagefunded by
Italythat has provided almost 30 grants for a
total of $5.7m. The rst round of funding supported 21 grants for vital technical assistance,
capacity building, training, analytical work and
pre-investment design studies that attracted
additional nancial support, leveraging about
$185m. This assistance has made cultural
heritage preservation, its adaptive reuse, and
sustainable tourism a fast growing area of
support from the Bank and its development
partners in assisting developing countries to
promote local economic development.
13

Box 6.

Reclaiming Eastern
Europes land assets

Large swaths of cities across Central and Eastern Europe still showcase the derelict remnants
of command economies. Abandoned or underused industrial land covers 13 percent of
Prague and 27 percent of Soa. Many of these
sites, known as brownelds, are located centrally and in close proximity to commercial centers. Brown they may be, but developers and
city planners see opportunities, if only someone
would remove waste and clean up the contamination, a common and costly obstacle.
Many cities have already done this, starting by
treating brownelds in different ways. Some are
attractive enough to be developed entirely with
private funding. Private cash is turning Bucharests Semanatoarea Plant into a business and
retail park, with a conference center and 1,200
apartments.
Other sites are more challenging: unclear
ownership can make cleanup more difcult

Europe, East Asia and the Middle East and

North Africa, has signaled the need to expand
engagement in both advisory services and investment lending in response. One effort now
under way is to document good international
practice in, say, riverfront or waterfront redevelopment approaches. Here the experience
of OECD countries provides insights on dealing with real estate developers, environmental remediation for browneld redevelopment,
and district level redevelopment.

14

Analyzing competitiveness. City development strategies with a local economic development focus have often applied competitiveness analysis to identify promising
manufacturing or service industries of a city
economy. Specic sectors can be targeted,
such as tourism, light manufacturing, sheries
or port activities. Or the strategy might adopt
a spatial approach by focusing on redevelopment of central business districts or providing

and investors wary. In some cases a partnership with governments can assuage fears, as
was done at the Skoda Plzen rehabilitation of
a 180 hectare site using nancing from the
Czech government and the private sector, but
highly contaminated sites may require full government nancing. The German government
had to invest $1.5b in over 100 projects to
turn abandoned steel works and mining operations in the Ruhr Valley into sites for other
kinds of production, parks, ofce and residential spaces.
The World Bank, for example, is carrying out a
pilot work program of stock-taking analysis in
a few interested cities, and learning exchanges with cities in Western Europe that have
experience in browneld redevelopment, to
build a foundation for assistance with browneld sites. Compiling case studies and best
practices from similar projects elsewhere will
hopefully usher in new public-private nancing schemes and much needed technical assistance. Soon more city brownelds will have
shoots of green.

serviced industrial land or enterprise zones in

partnership with the private sector.
The strategies provide an operational framework for city visioning exercises and consultations with the private sector, NGOs, educational institutions, media, and other stakeholders.
Linking strategy formulation to master planning and capital investment planning is vital,
but many city development strategies lack well
prepared investment plans and the nancing
to implement them. So, the Bank will support
capital investment planning to prepare bankable investments over a multiyear program
that can attract needed nancing.
Assessing inner-city markets. Market intelligence can help cities attract investment in
often overlooked inner-city areas. A new tool,
the Inner-city Market Assessment, is being piloted in Bogota and Johannesburg, using data
mining techniques to uncover underserved

Box 7. Beyond oil: diversifying

Yemens economy
through its port cities
Compared with a few years ago, Adens seafront
sh market is now a center of burgeoning enterprise. During peak periods there are roughly
230 sh sellers in the market (up from only 50 in
2003), and 200 shing boats now moor in the
bay area, far more than the 60 before. The market is managed by the local Fishermans Association, a model of good practice, which carries
out regular cleaning and maintenance of the
new facility and leases out stalls to small-scale
shermen, many of whom supply new restaurants. As part of a broader redevelopment effort
for the waterfront area, the market also links to
an adjoining tourist attractiona Portuguese
castle on Sira Islandand has triggered private
investment in residential and commercial buildings in the surrounding area. The upgraded sh
market also provides $25,000 in annual revenue
to the local government.
The difference from 2003 is investment. The
Sira Fish Market is just one of several projects
under Yemens Port Cities Development Program (PCDP), a 12-year $98m effort to create
employment opportunities in the port cities of
Aden, Hodeidah, and Mukalla. In Aden, the
PCDP has helped rehabilitate a small-scale industrial area lacking basic electricity, roads and
sanitation infrastructure. The program began in
2003 with small infrastructure investments, followed by drafting city development strategies.
For the rst phase, the World Bank provided a
$23.4m adaptable program loan, and offered
technical assistance to develop a port sector
strategy. With the support of Cities Alliance, the
PCDP also organized a study tour and learning

markets in urban areas and attract investment, broaden retail services, and create jobs.
Due to the informality of living conditions and
market opportunities in inner-city areas, there
has been severe undercounting in population
and market potential. Initial indications suggest good scope for enhancing services and

exchange with the city of Rotterdam to provide

Yemens port city ofcials with best practice examples about rehabilitating ports and integrating port activity with the city economy.
Attracting new businesses is critical. To most investors Yemens economy begins and ends with
oil. It accounts for 33 percent of GDP and a disproportionate 85 percent of export revenue. This
makes Yemen relevant to the global commodity
market, but it is a precarious foundation for an
entire national economyand indeed a government that relies on one resource for 70 percent
of its revenue. It is not just irregular oil prices that
pose worries; the big problem is that the oil is
running out. Production decreased by a third between 2002 and 2008, and it only has 3 billion
barrels lefta lot, but a billion less than in 2006.
A partnership with the Banks private sector
armthe International Finance Corporationis
also helping to establish a one-stop-shop for
business registration and investor services. Local
businessmen have provided a ringing endorsement of these new initiatives by contributing to a
new Private-Public Partnership Fund, which has
mobilized more than $350,000 in private contributions to build a training center and fund rehabilitation of other infrastructure in Aden.
The second phase of the program is set to begin
in 2010, and will focus more investments on Hodeidah (which is being promoted as an agroprocessing center) and Mukalla (for its tourism
development strategy), while scaling up nancing across all cities to support investments of
national signicance; investigate the creation of
a value chain that could deliver local economic
growth within four to ve years; and improve the
management capacity of the three port cities.

attracting investment (in addition to expanding the local tax base). In Johannesburg, for
example, a partnership with the Post Bank
could help in providing basic savings and loan
services down market, targeting the underserved residents and businesses in the citys
Urban Development Zone.

15

Encouraging progressive urban

land and housing markets
Enabling land and housing markets remains
a cornerstone of the urban policy framework. But where formal markets have failed
to reach a majority of citizens due to land
scarcity and affordability issues, practical
measures include micronance for incremental housing solutions, low-cost building
technologies, and rental housing. Most important, to anticipate future urban growth,
urban planning audits are recommended
to ensure that urban regulations are not set
arbitrarily, preventing cities from achieving higher densities and causing land and
housing scarcities that can drive up prices.
Starting in the early 1990s, many developing
country governments and donors adopted
an enabling markets approach to housing,
based on policies encouraged by the World
Bank. This approach focused reforms on securing land rights, providing access and cost
recovery for infrastructure, and improving the
balance sheets of housing institutions. World
Bank and donor projects helped to reform
and expand mortgage credit, spreading these
systems worldwide. The hope has been that
pushing this and other aspects of the formal
sector housing systems down market would
eventually reach lower income households.
Despite some successes, affordability problems persist, and informality in the housing
and land sectors abounds. By the mid-2000s,
it became clear that the enabling markets
approach was far too sanguine about the
difculties in creating well functioning housing markets where everyone is adequately
housed for a reasonable share of income on
residential land at a reasonable price. The
general principles of enabling markets are still
valid, but must be combined with sensible
policies and pragmatic approaches to urban
planning and targeted subsidies for the urban
poor (box 8).

16

Four key housing and land issues consistently pose the greatest challenges in most
urban areas: planning for markets, public land
management, property rights, and housing
nance. Dealing with each set of challenges

requires policies to push formal housing and

land systems down market, while creating
and sustaining more bottom-up approaches
that serve the poorest.
Eliminating regressive policies and regulations. Urbanization will continue to put
pressure on already limited access to land,
so cities should eliminate policies and regulations that exacerbate this pressure. Urban
regulations are indispensable for markets
to function, but they should be assessed
for their impacts on land and housing supply, affordability, and structure. Urban spatial
structures evolve slowly but often irreversibly
through market responses to infrastructure
investments, regulations, and taxes. The effects of ill conceived policies are thus difcult
to undo.
How then should cities proceed? Experience
suggests that only a few regulations are critical: minimum plot sizes and minimum apartment sizes, limitations on oor area ratios,
zoning plans that limit the type of use and the
intensity of use of urban land, and land subdivision ratios of developable and saleable land
in new greeneld developments. Cities can
use urban planning audits to determine which
regulations should be changed to enable
density and urban form to move in tandem
with urbanization. The Bank is developing a
global knowledge product for cities to systematically assess urban planning regulations
and guidelines and their potential distortionary effects.
Preparing the fringe for new settlement.
Given the predictable rapid increase in city
populations, a more proactive public role in
preparing the periurban fringe to accommodate new settlement would in many cases
be sensible. One approach would require
governments and municipalities to acquire
land for block-level infrastructure rights of
way around the peripheries of rapidly growing cities. For some cities, former irrigation
networks may be a useful starting point. This
should be complemented by institutional
measures to protect these rights of way from

Box 8.

Promoting pro-poor
urban growth

As urban populations increase rapidly, so too

does urban poverty. In Vietnam, every year
sees one million new urban residents. By 2020,
40 percent of Vietnams 100m are expected to
live in cities. Rapid development is sure to follow, but what is less certain is that it will help
those most in need. Too often, gleaming city
centers are surrounded by slums.
To address this problem, the Vietnam Urban
Upgrading Project, launched in 2004, targeted certain cities to help planners develop
better pro-poor strategies. New partnerships
between communities and local governments
have helped resettle families out of dilapidated
shanty-towns, upgraded infrastructure, and expanded social services. Small-scale loans allow
for incremental home improvements and technical assistance has drastically improved land
administration processes.
Funding has been collaborative: Vietnam allocated $150m to the program, supplemented by
$5m from the Japanese government and $4m
from local community groups. IDA contributed
$222m. In July 2009, an additional $160m was
approved to complete a canal improvement

encroachment before building the infrastructure, which should occur only after effective demand is conrmed and resources are
available.
Managing public lands. Recent Bank technical assistance to governments on public
land management is paying dividends and
should be expanded to policy-based lending
where appropriate. While not all governments
are large land holders, those that do control
a large stock in the public sector need to be
strategic in the way they manage those assets, including the way they are disposed.
Bank advice on public land management
has addressed inventorying and accounting
for public land assets, clarifying rules and

project in Ho Chi Minh City, beneting 1m

residents.
Midway through the project, over 200,000 of
Vietnams poor have beneted directly from
schools, health clinics, and community centers.
New drainage and wastewater systems in multiple cities are beneting 400,000 people. More
than 36,000 housing improvement loans have
been made, with a 95 percent repayment rate.
Eighty percent of households in targeted cities now have proper land-use certicates, an
increase from 50 percent before the program,
and property values have increased two to four
times.
But perhaps the most encouraging benets are
the reforms to administrative procedures that
are aimed to be more inclusive of local community voice and priorities. Participatory planning
and community supervision of works were instituted in all target cities, and a National Urban
Upgrading Strategy was approved by the Prime
Minister in 2009.
Phase two of the project is upgrading low-income areas for another 600,000. All told almost
2m people are expected to benet directly from
both phases, and another 1m will experience
indirect benets.

decisionmaking chains for the use of these

lands, and improving information systems
related to these assets. Where appropriate,
governments are advised on the design and
execution of market-based auctions of some
public land assets. In recent years, such auctions have raised noteworthy sums of municipal nance for Cairo, Mumbai, Bangalore,
Istanbul, Cape Town, and Bogota. This approach needs to balance the risks of making
municipal budgets too dependent on landbased nance, a source of vulnerability during an economic downturn.
Continuing with sites and services. The
decit of affordable shelter supply and the
dominant incremental construction patterns

17

of the urban poor, suggest a continuing role

for sites-and-services projects. Once the
mainstay of the Banks urban assistance,
these projects are increasingly rare in the
Banks portfolio except in post-disaster reconstruction. But for governments with large
tracts of public land, they sometimes offer
a politically irresistible opportunity for direct
intervention in urban shelter markets. Going
forward, Bank support for such projects will
engage governments in careful scrutiny of
the proposed locations based on effective
demand and transport connectivity to labor
markets.
Compulsory land acquisitions. The Bank
can now nance compulsory acquisition of
land when a direct role in land development
is justiable. Compulsory land acquisition is
already common in many Bank operations.
Such acquisitions may be justiable for rights
of way for road or rail network improvements.
They may also be needed to bring trunk-level
infrastructure services within reach of existing
informal settlements on the edge of the city or
to provide adequate transport links between
sites and services projects on the periphery and income-earning opportunities in the
heart of the city. They may also be required
for negotiated resettlement or relocations associated with informal settlement upgrading
or inner city regeneration.

18

Developing primary mortgage markets.

Prerequisites for a functioning primary mortgage market include land titling or at least
a registry system, enforcement of contracts
including foreclosure procedures, and fair
and transparent underwriting guidelines. The
World Bank has helped and will continue to
assist countries develop primary mortgage
markets. In Brazil, Mexico, and Morocco,
the Bank provided housing development
policy loans in excess of $1 billion, as well
as a technical assistance to promote the
conditions needed to push formal nance
down market. As part of this effort, the Bank
helped rationalize the system of homeownership subsidies by targeting lower income
households.

Work on housing nance and subsidy reform

is expected to continue in Brazil, Egypt, India,
and elsewhere as countries look to the formal housing sector as a source of economic
stimulus in the current downturn. Likewise,
where primary markets exist, it makes sense
for countries to pursue a secondary market
strategy as a source of long-term capital for
nancial institutionsas long as the lessons
from the recent experience of lax underwriting and weak oversight are incorporated.
Promoting microfinance for housing.
Housing micronance holds promise as a
way to reach individuals or families who build
incrementally or who are too poor to qualify
for conventional loans. Most housing micronance experts believe there is vast potential
demand for their products. Experience suggests that housing micronance products
have served the low-income salaried poor,
and even those with irregular incomes, with
encouraging results. Subsidies are not necessary as long as loan amounts are reasonable
and terms are short. One of the most promising innovations is the hybrid value chain in
which private sector companies (such as cement or oor tile companies) team with micronance providers and citizen groups to lower
the cost of producing housing. Here, the
Bank can help promote, expand, and evaluate existing and new micronance efforts.
Supporting rental markets. Rental housing is an important part of a balanced housing policy. Renting may be a better option for
smaller households, newer households, and
poorer households. It also allows workers to
more easily move to jobs. And it frees capital
for other types of investments. In developing
countries, the demand for rental housing is
substantial, accounting for between one-third
and two-thirds of the housing stock in many
cities. In a rapidly urbanizing world, the demand for rental housing will continue to grow.
Segmenting rental markets will lead to bettertargeted policies. Some overall policies may
make sensereasonable codes, balanced
landlord-tenant relations, elimination of rent

Box 9.

Numbers on doors:
how to address the
developing world

In recent decades, many cities in the developing

world have experienced rapid urban growth. But
inadequate identication systems have created a
worrisome predicament: all the efforts to improve
government capacity and service delivery can be
useless if ambulance drivers and tax collectors
cannot nd (or even know about) a residence.
Painting house numbers seems like a cheap
remedy. The challenge is knowing what to paint.
Expanding a moribund system or starting from
scratch is not as easy as it rst seems. Imagine
creating a computerized address database in
a sprawling city with thousands of unmarked
homes stacked along winding streets. With no
system of street coordinates, how can drivers
nd their way around a constantly growing city?
How can municipal services be provided, and
able to pinpoint breakdowns in water, electricity, and telephone systems?
Implementing a system is generally undertaken
by municipal administrations, which may set up

control, tax incentives. But a more nuanced

picture of local rental markets is needed to
develop local policies. Developers, smallscale operators, people sharing living quarters with tenantsall have different needs
and motivations. The Bank is well positioned
to provide research and technical assistance
to cities seeking information on the various
ways rental properties come to market, how
the properties are nanced, how land pressures affect the operation of rental markets,
and how migration affects rents.
Expanding street addressing. The Bank intends to help client countries expand the use
of intermediate land tenure and administration

a special unit to manage it. To support them,

the World Bank has reviewed practices in 13
African countries, and written a comprehensive
street addressing manual for developing systems and keeping them updated.
There are three main benets. For local governments, addresses increase municipal revenues
and improve urban management. For the public, it makes the city more user-friendly. And for
the private sector, it enables utility concessionaires to manage their networks effectively and
improve fee collection.
The program also advises governments how to
go about setting up addresses. Ofcials must
work closely with the public, which can pose
a few pitfalls. Street addresses can raise the
issue of property rights. Names and numbers
are a sign of ownership, a thorny subject in
many cities. Numbering squatter settlements
can be interpreted as an implicit recognition of
ownership. Such uncertainties should not deter
governments from working with local communities in nding intermediate solutions, given the
potential benets of increasing access to services for the poor.

tools, such as street addressing in informal

urban areas (see box 9). Street addressing,
now implemented in more than 50 African
cities, basically maps existing settlement patterns regardless of the land tenure or ownership and translates that spatial information
into a geographic information system that
city administrators use for a wide variety of
purposes ranging from postal delivery to epidemic monitoring. In the coming decade, the
Bank will expand use of this product in other
regions, where appropriate. It will also explore other emerging incremental approaches to consolidating property claims, including
those linked to legally recognized forms of
land tenure.

19

Promoting a safe and

sustainable urban environment
This business line advocates a focus on
urban form and design to achieve efciency gains, reduce a citys greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions, and take advantage of the
co-benets of climate change mitigation
and adaptation. As part of the Urban Strategy, the Bank is launching the ECO2 Cities
Program. Using an ECO2 Cities Audit, participating cities can develop a baseline diagnosis of their current status and suggest
such measures as changing technologies
and retrotting infrastructure and buildings.
The Banks joint work with the Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction, combined
with the development of a new Vulnerability
Assessment tool, aims to improve the safety
and well-being of vulnerable urban populations, particularly the poor.

this path dependency into account in the design of cities, it is important that consumers
respond accordingly. In cities where densities
are low, consumers respond by locking into
vehicle purchases, housing types, and locations that prevent them from responding to
price signals and government-induced incentives to change behaviors. Good examples of
cities that have addressed the challenge of
reducing dependence on cars are Hong Kong
and Singapore, which limited individual car
use and urban sprawl early on.

The vulnerability of urban systems to climate

change poses numerous dilemmas for decisionmakers and stakeholders at the local,
national, and regional levels. A majority of
the worlds cities are on coasts or river ood
plains, especially such megacities as Mumbai
and So Paulo. Climate change risks must be
understood in a context of deteriorating environmental health conditions due to rising air
pollution, and signicant risks to urban water
supply due to watershed mismanagement.

Reducing energy use through efciency measures and improved urban planning can reduce a citys dependence on imported fuels
and reduce energy costs, freeing up resources for improved city services. It brings socioeconomic benets, such as reduced commuting times, improved air quality and health,
and more green and community space. And
it improves competitiveness by lowering energy bills and operating costs. But there may
be substantial barriers to energy efciency
such as rigid procurement and budgeting
policies, low energy prices, inadequate planning and design methods, and limitations on
public nancing. There may also be limited
technical and risk management skills, large
project development costs, public repayment
concerns, limited equity, and the need for
new contractual mechanisms. Public end-users may have limited incentives, unclear ownership of cost savings, and a general lack of
awareness. And nanciers may be faced with
high transaction costs, high perceived risks,
behavioral biases, and problems in adopting
new technologies.

Linking environmental health, energy efciency, and livability concerns, leading cities are
now considering how to build sustainability
into the way they plan for the future. This has
important climate change co-benets, because a greater emphasis on public transit,
higher density, energy-efcient buildings, and
better facilities management can contribute
to city development objectives while reducing
a citys greenhouse gas emissions.

20

Rapidly urbanizing cities in middle-income

countries can determine their efciency in their
choice of urban form and corresponding infrastructure investments, simply because such
investments represent long-lived capital stock
that can lock in emissions for long periods.
The investments tend to be lumpy and can
generate signicant ancillary emissions. Taking

Smart growth policies can address housing,

transport, and environmental concerns by
promoting denser developments when such
density is desirableand can support jobs,
services and other amenities.

A sharper focus on climate change and its impact on developing country cities will require
retooling the approaches to urban environmental management. The World Banks approach is informed by a ve-cluster analysis

of key issues and constraints and the corresponding responses.

t

Cluster 1: Urban household and workplace environmental health challenges

are characterized by poor quality housing, cheap dirty fuel, and inadequacies
in provision of water, sanitation, and solid
waste removal. This cluster also includes
the environmental health aspects of occupational health and safety, such as biological pathogens, chemical pollutants,
physical hazards, and health-damaging
noise levels.

t

Cluster 2: City system environmental

challenges comprise air and water pollution, trafc accidents, and solid waste
management.

t

Cluster 3: City eco-system challenges

are interactions between cities and their
physical regions that include unsustainable use of freshwater resources, the erosion of protective eco-systems, poor watershed management, city expansion into
hazardous sites, and the export of solid
wastes, liquid wastes, and air pollution.

t

Cluster 4: Disaster risks to the city system comprise extreme events within and
around the city, such as cyclones, storms,
earthquakes, oods, and landslides.

t

Cluster 5: Cities and global environmental

challenges are characterized by issues
of resource availability and eco-system
functioning at a global level, with rising
greenhouse gas emissions being the
most pressing.

There are good reasons to set priorities for

different clusters over time and in accord
with a citys development. In low-income and
middle-income nations, for instance, setting a
priority for the rst cluster would be most appropriate. These challenges can and should
be addressed through focusing on sound
municipal management, and the provision of
basic services.

For larger urban centers or centers of heavy

industry (irrespective of national income),
the second cluster must also be addressed.
Larger and more successful urban centers
also need to give priority to the third cluster,
while addressing the rst two for their lowincome population.
The fourth cluster must be a priority for urban
centers where extreme weather events are already causing problems or are likely to do so
in the near future because of climate change.
Since per capita greenhouse gas emissions
of urban citizens in the developing world
are usually one-twentieth to one-hundredth
of those in high-income nations, cluster ve
may well be a lower priority for many cities.
But carbon nancing and other incentive programs can make it worthwhile for a city to reduce emissions. Many cities have taken initiatives on their own, and such innovations need
to be shared across countries and regions to
provide guidance for other cities wishing to
emulate their success. For example, Amman,
Jordan, attracted by the link to carbon nancing, aims to capture methane gas at the city
landll and convert it to green energy to be
fed back to the grid (box 10).
For slums (cluster 1), upgrading would be the
principle approach, but with specic applications including support for home improvements, such as concrete oors in homes and
increasing ventilation, and supporting programs targeting vulnerable groups, such as
waste pickers. The approaches recognize the
importance of incremental housing improvements to the lives and well-being of the poor.
For the environmental challenges of cities
(cluster 2), the Bank is focusing on phasing
out highly polluting vehicles, improving public
transport, and monitoring air quality more intensively. For solid waste management, new
sector policy-based approaches are being
tried, as in Morocco, establishing a sound
policy framework to set collection and management standards, ensure cost recovery,
and put in place accountability measures

21

Box 10.

Carbon credits for

a city: improving
municipal solid waste
management in Amman

For the residents of Amman waste disposal

is basically the same as it is anywhere else
around the world. The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) collects around 2,400 tons of solid
waste on a daily basis for almost all residents
and disposes of it in a semi-controlled landll
outside the city.
This would seem a luxury for an emerging
economyindeed, it isbut Amman residents are paying dearly for it, through levies on
electricity bills and fees tacked onto business
licenses. Good service is not the only reason
costs are too high: the system is comprehensive but terribly inefcient and does little to collect revenue from other sources, such as recoverable materials and landll gas recovery.
To increase revenues, the municipality is working with the World Bank on the $40.5m Amman
Solid Waste Management Project, approved in
September 2008. It will fund two new transfer
stations to improve cost effectiveness for waste

between municipalities and national oversight

agencies.

22

In dealing with eco-system management

(cluster 3), a combination of specic interventions and holistic approaches is being
tested and developed. These approaches include focusing on urban design issues, such
as including appropriate infrastructure and
basic services for pedestrians, cyclists, and
other nonmotorized transport in city planning
schemes, creating a variety of housing and
transportation options that would minimize
motorized vehicle transport for low-income
groups in accessing city jobs, and using inclusionary zoning, shared-equity arrangements, and tax incentives to create affordable, mixed-income communities in transit
corridors. Increasing areas of support also

collection and transport, and upgrade an existing disposal facility to meet the citys future
long-term needs. Technical assistance and
institutional support will help Amman improve
strategic planning and evaluate performance in
the solid waste sector.
The project has substantial environmental benets. Engineering services will enhance the
environmental and operational performance
of existing disposal facilities. And current practices will be more low-carbon and allow for the
generation of green electricity.
Attached to this lending operation, the World
Bank has entered into an agreement with the
municipality to develop and implement a Clean
Development Project operation, and to purchase part of the certied emission reductions
resulting from this project. These amount to
0.9 to 0.95m tons of CO2 equivalent from 2009
to 2014, creating revenues estimated at $15m
by 2014. The project will also generate green
electricity (about 160,000 MWh by 2014), with
revenues estimated at $25m to 2019. The project will thus generate net revenues of $16.9m in
present values, following an incremental investment of $23.5m.

include a focus on managing watersheds and

protecting city rivers and lakes from illegal
dumping of untreated wastewater.
Most recently, the Bank has developed a
holistic approach to promoting ecological
and economic cities: the ECO2 Cities Model
combines energy efciency design with environmentally sound technologies (box 11).
This approach begins with an ECO2 Cities
audit to diagnose potential efciency gains
and emission reductions as a basis for interventions that include retrotting infrastructure
and buildings, coupled with introducing
new technologies. In greeneld situations,
the ECO2 Cities model or approach can be
adopted from the outset. Cities have a role
in each of these areas, but there is often a
need to coordinate with national transport,

Box 11. Eco2 Cities: ecological

cities as economic
cities

tourists, provided bike routes and pedestrian

pathways that linked into the transportation
network, and increased property values.

Rapid urbanization in developing countries

presents a unique opportunity to plan, develop,
build, and manage cities that are ecologically
and economically sustainable. It also provides
an impetus to retrot and redevelop existing
areas. Doing so has immediate effects and
locks-in systemic benets in the future.

Curitiba is not alone. Singapore, Stockholm, Yokohama, and Vancouver all show that it is possible to realize greater socioeconomic value from
smaller and renewable resource bases while simultaneously decreasing harmful pollution and
unnecessary waste. Urban sustainability of this
kind is a powerful investment that will pay compounding dividends. In a fast-paced and uncertain global economy, cities that adopt such an
integrated approach are more likely to survive
shocks, attract businesses, and manage costs.

Through its innovative approaches to urban

planning, city management, and transport, Curitiba, a city in the Brazilian state of Paran, has
been able to sustainably absorb a population
increase from 361,000 (in 1960) to 1,797,000 (in
2007). Well known for its innovative bus rapid
transit system, Curitiba has implemented innovative planning solutions and institutionalized an
enduring culture of sustainability. Consequently, Curitiba has the highest rate of public transport ridership in Brazil (45 percent), the lowest
congestion related economic losses, and a low
rates of air pollution. The citys programs have
also made a concerted effort to make the reforms pro-poor, building ecologically-friendly
community housing and starting small business
assistance programs.
Curitiba also invested in large parks for ood
prevention and recreation, solving the citys
ooding problems at one-fth the cost of constructing canals. This also greatly enhanced
the attractiveness of the city for residents and

water, and environment agencies at the policy level.

In responding to disaster risks (cluster 4),
the Bank supports approaches to climate
changeinduced and other risks due to
natural causes. Interventions include risk
assessments, zoning regulations, land use
planning, building codes, disaster resilient
construction of critical infrastructure, and
preparedness activities, including city and
subcity emergency plans. For the recovery

To systematically promote these efforts in the

developing world, Eco2 Cities, a new World
Bank initiative, aims to help cities achieve
greater ecological and economic sustainability by providing a foundation for integrated and
sustainable urban development. It is based on
a one-system approach that helps cities plan,
design, and manage integrated urban systems
and marks a clear divergence from typical silobased urban development. It also promotes a
more holistic framework for decision-making
and investment planning by incorporating and
accounting for life-cycle cost-benet analysis,
the value of all capital assets (manufactured,
natural, human, and social), and a broader
scope of risk assessments in decision making.
The Eco2 analytical and operational framework
can be adapted and customized to the particular needs of a city.

phase, activities include the damage, loss,

and needs assessment, which form the basis
for the reconstruction and recovery plan. The
goal for the urban planner should be to mainstream these activities in the policies of city
government.
To address resource use efciency and ecosystem functioning at the global level (cluster
5), a combination of energy efciency measures, emissions monitoring, and carbon nancing approaches is recommended.

23

Cross-cutting approaches
to reinforce the strategy
Four building blocks will support the implementation of the Banks Urban Strategy:
t

t

24

Knowledge programs, product development, and dissemination. These activities will ensure that the Bank maintains
its leadership in developing knowledge
programs and products, while promoting the dissemination of knowledge and
good practices through a variety of instruments and initiatives. The Urban
Research Symposium will be continued, coupled with expanded collaboration with universities and think tanks
on critical areas of research interest. A
new Scholar in Residence Program will
reinforce this partnership, with an initial
focus on urban planning. New and ongoing knowledge products and services
are also being developed or brought
in line within the framework of the new
Urban Strategy.
Financing strategies. Financing strategies for urban development will address
a range of circumstances, depending
on the nancial status of the local government, the impact of the global economic and nancial crisis, and the quality
and coverage of existing infrastructure
services.

t

Partnerships. Ongoing collaboration will

be fostered through thematic group engagement and special initiatives. External
partnerships will be enhanced through
joint collaborative ventures with development partners, using to the extent possible the Knowledge Partnership Platforms
of Marseille and Singapore. Cities Alliance,
Water and Sanitation Program, UN Habitat, and United Cities and Local Governments will continue to play important upstream, preinvestment roles through their
engagement with cities on several levels.

t

Results management. A renewed focus on

results management is elaborated in this
strategy in response to the global agenda
on aid effectiveness. The Banks urban
units are dening meaningful and measurable project indicators to better report on
the impacts of the Banks urban development assistance. Support to national governments and cities will come in the form
of establishing urban databases and facilitating participation in the new Global City
Indicators Program. The Bank recognizes
that building successful institutions and
in-country data collection and analysis will
pay the largest dividends in strengthening
urban management and increasing responsiveness to the results agenda.

Sustainable Development Network

Urban and Local Government Anchor
www.worldbank.org/urban
urbanhelp@worldbank.org